Lawrence Lerner on venture capital for RChain projects at Pithia

0:00I'm Jay Addison from event chain dot IO for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network today on blockchain interviews we have Laurens learner from Pythia Laurens how are you doing this afternoon excellent how are you I do fantastic thank you can you tell us a little bit about what Pythia is and what Pythia does absolutely thank you for asking and thank you for having me

0:20on at the end of the day Pythia is a focused blockchain venture fund we're located right in the heart of Seattle or part of the arcane ecosystem if it was founded with the notion of really helping to build all the foundational things that we need to do in blockchain there are lots of aspirational things but we feel that if you look at blockchain as the operating system then

0:48adding digital identity wallets exchanges data management we're starting to see all of those things become common in ubiquitous we're taking our investments there I'm accessing now how did you get involved with the arcane project that's really interesting so I've known some of the original founders and I called and some others for a couple of years I've been working in

1:11other blockchain and Bitcoin projects and you know last year as things really started to heat up in the summer of July of 2017 they asked me to come on to do some business strategy product marketing and and really help them with outreach for my network and as the year went on they said we really need someone to help and accelerate what we're doing in the

1:35venture fund and in December of last year they asked me to come on and in January joined a CEO fantastic now what if other outside investors or VC's fund managers wanted to get involved in Pythia is that a possibility can can people invest in Pythia to invest in our chain projects absolutely we welcome other limited partners we get a lot of requests for education I mean

1:59everybody's still a little unclear about what blockchain is we did two events this week alone on educating investors and entrepreneurs and founders as to what is blockchain so absolutely well welcome them we get requests from Angel groups from other venture capital funds that have broader reach and and look at the larger market but haven't yet dedicated a focus and I

2:26think that's where on the interest comes number one for our chain itself because people are interested in how that's going to bring blockchain 3.0 we know live in December of this year to the marketplace what does that really mean so we also get questions from enterprise I'm talking to two of the large enterprise telecom carriers who are looking at ways to use third-generation

2:53blockchain in their business my background in enterprise software and other people on the team are really bringing those conversations forward and then other investors and we're starting at the the tires kicked by family offices and more traditional investment funds we're now becoming more comfortable with the idea of blockchain and recording us help educate their

3:17offices and bring them into the mix now how much capital does Pythia have for this whole project in funding our chain applications we were started as 170 million dollar fund we've deployed capital into three companies life ID trusted key in digital tone and we've got another five that we'll be wrapping up and probably in the next two weeks at about 70 companies in the pipeline today

3:43so we're really excited about all of the things that we're seeing we're also doing some co investing with some of those larger enterprises that I've talked about we're also investing in developers and really helping the organizations because quite honestly there's a lot of project out there and there's not enough blockchain architects and developers to do all of the work

4:08that we're seeing and we're also investing in education programs as well yeah you're right you guys have got something and the Archaea project has something that's fairly unique compared to a lot of the blockchain projects out there that are kind of headed up by one or two people or or a small party which you know the blockchain is really got an amazing system with the the whole

4:26community and the community kind of to a certain degree runs the project right so I really like what our chain is doing now if if there's other developers or people that are working on applications blockchain applications that want to get on the our chain never can want to try and get some financing for that how would they go about that so there's a

4:45couple of things that they should do absolutely go to developer dart chain co-op to learn more about the technology the product and everything else that's going on pitches p.i tches and Pythia comm is another way to get to us for funding okay fantastic now how does Pythia make revenues on this like is it relying on the applications that you finance that are

5:12gonna be on the RT networking making revenue for pivot to heavy return on investment is that the the idea behind this we're a standard two and twenty type fund within within the venture capital world so when there's a liquidity event in our companies that's where we return we received some of the return and that's where our continuing funding will come from that in limited

5:36partners and management fees that we take off of the funds that we manage now as Pythia private company or public company we're a private company you're a private company now what's coming what's coming up for the roadmap for and milestones for Pythia in the fourth quarter because i understand that the main that's gonna launch for our chain in the fourth

5:55quarter of this year as the understanding that's right we are so busy to the end of the year and what we've done is we've reverse mapped everything from then I'll start with maybe a really big and interesting announcement is that the test net will go live and will be lit up in Berlin and our comm 3 which is the our chain developer conference so that is going to

6:16be a big moment where we're bringing partners other investors and companies into the mix so we're all tracking towards making sure that we've got a very vibrant and large ecosystem for our chain and other companies as we bring things in we do deal days at Pythia every Thursday we established a relationship with because

6:44Seattle is very close to British Columbia in Canada we do quarterly deal days for them we had our first one about three weeks ago which was really exciting so the Ministry of Trade and Investment has sent that up with us we'll be doing one with the British government in September where oh we're gonna do some public deal days and we always do working sessions we're out and about to

7:08make sure everybody knows about the investment opportunities have we work with companies and to really promote the arching message as well I'm just looking at my notes we do our officers and then most importantly validators we know that every network is highly dependent on the number of validators that we get out there so we've been bringing in our you

7:34know our the the companies we've invested in ISPs that we know miners that we know that see the end of the road wait for some of the things that they're doing and I was thinking about how they can move to our chain we've got one company we're looking at investment I can't name yet but it's going to be building basically an ERP for the mining system so more validators that is

7:57another huge push for us and everybody in the art chain community so Lawrence you mentioned our con 3 this is the our chain development conference coming up that's right it's in Berlin the first week of September ok so any developers that would want to meet you I imagine you're gonna be at that conference that's right right so anybody anybody that's in the blockchain sector that

8:16would like to meet you and try and perhaps get some assistance from Pythia and moving towards the are chain platform it would be ideal to meet you at our Archon 3 that's exactly right we're here in Seattle in the intervening days or afterwards that sounds great now how can our viewers learn more about Pythia or contact you directly if they want to get involved either as a

8:37financier or as a blockchain project looking to get on the our chain Network and getting some financial backing for that absolutely thank you they can go to Pythia Kampai thi a.com write to investors and Pythia calm or pitches as I said earlier at Pythia dot-com so they can learn more about our investment strategy or approach our deal thesis is out there and all the things

9:04that we do to help grow the ecosystem not only for our chain but blockchain in general and then developer down our chain that co-op to really learn more about the platform how nodes are being set up rolling which is a smart contract language and the architecture as well learn slur nur from Pythia inca certainly been a pleasure speaking with you today on blockchain interviews I'd

9:27love to follow up after the Archon 3 conference just to find out there seems to be a lot of buzz around our chain these days and I'd like to follow up and find out what happened I'm sure it's gonna be a very exciting conference let's let's let's do that in the coming week so in the coming months here Lawrence get a follow up on that I appreciate it sounds like a plan thanks

9:43so much for having me on it's very talking to you again thanks to your time Lawrence I appreciate it all right Cheers bye-bye you